My friend Alan as a young boy, standing on his uncle's shoulders in Brazil, ready to leap into his future, with many cousins in the background. ____________ ...

Is it a freshwater pond? If so, is the water stagnant and murky, or clear, with light dancing on its surface? Maybe the body of water is a rain-swollen river...

Whenever I’m learning a new skill – let’s say, how to properly document a sea turtle nest, surf tiny waves, or make toast without burning it – I stop now and...

“It’s just that my protagonist doesn’t want her brother to die,” I told a traveling companion at a café in Kathmandu. “I think it might be the only plausible...

The struggle was real. After reading my forthcoming novel, City in a Forest, an editor whose opinion I trust (Kim Sheeter) pointed out that one of my charact...

In my third novel, Seeing Gethin, my protagonist’s brother is crazy about snakes—brown, red, spotted, striped, harmless, venomous, or invasive. He’s a “herpe...

My goal, in this nonfiction essay, was to provide a first-hand report on what Russ Douthat described in The New York Times as the 1970s culture of statutory ...

“You need to find her gun and hide it,” my sister mumbled while our mother, propped in a hospital bed, prattled on about finding Bigfoot. “Hide her sleeping ...

Based on my partner’s encounter with U.S. Customs officials at Dulles airport, this essay is a romantic exploration of the discrimination and stigma that too...

At her neck’s nape, the red splotch still lurks, a sunny chick’s fuzz covers the scar of snarling angels, roaring, refusing her newborn release. “Angel bite!...